Spooky Author Chat with B.D. Prince

This episode of What Happens With Sid, as I've mentioned, for the past couple of weeks, we are in the midst of spooky season with Halloween just a few weeks away. But some of us horror lovers, the true ones, celebrate year-round. And so now I am joined by one of my favorite horror authors and buddy, Beattie Prince. Beattie, how are you? I am awesome. This is my time of year. This is my jam. The weather's cool. Things are getting spooky. Spooky time, 24-7, 365 over here. Yes, exactly. And many of you probably remember him when I had him on not too long after I, like, first kicked off the show. And you were in person, and it was absolutely amazing meeting you and your wife. And now we have been locked in ever since. So tell the people, if they're not familiar with you, a little bit about who you are and what really drew you to being a horror suspense author. All righty. Well, I'm a combination horror author and screenwriter. But I was warped at a really young age by an older brother. And the fact that I grew up just viewing distance from my upper bedroom from a cemetery, that helped. But yeah, I mean, growing up reading Tales from the Crypt and, you know, all the EC comics and watching the Munsters and Adam's Family and Bewitched and, you know, Twilight Zone and all that stuff, you know, just, I mean, from the youngest age, I just always loved the dark side. yeah and i love tales of the crypt that used to be like one of my favorite shows as a kid which i was like should explain a lot nowadays and now it's finally on i think it's Tubi they brought it back so like last night i was just in bed just like eating apple pie just like watching just the nostalgia of it and my mom was like were you scared i said girl i've been watching this since before i could probably read so no of course i know it's like it's in my blood and i get it from her so i mean where can we go wrong well yeah what can she say you know it's like i inherited this from you so exactly you know you passed it down and so you have many books that are under your belt one of my favorite ones is eye for an eye so tell readers a little bit about what's involved in this storyline and kind of where do you get your ideas from so eye for an eye is actually my novella collection it's two novellas uh each with a common theme of eye for an eye so If you like good female revenge tales, very Hitchcockian style, psychological thrillers, then that's the one for you. It comprises two novellas. The first one is called Committed, which was actually inspired by a paranormal investigation I did at Eloise. And I'm sure many of your Michigan listeners are familiar with Eloise, which is now an abandoned asylum. you know back in the day you know if you know the history some of the tragic history of it uh but you know you would have everyone from the poor to the disabled to criminally insane people all under the same roof and so uh i and i started you know going back and hearing some of those stories and reading up on that and only and i then i had that idea like what would happen to like say a 1950s housewife dropped in the middle of that so so basically the uh the log line for that would be we have a 1950s housewife she suspects her husband's having an affair and she's trying to prove her suspicions and her sanity is she is he gaslighting her or is she going crazy like her mother and then what would happen if that led to this place and it has one of the sweetest twist endings i get more responses from the ending of eye for an eye than than anything else i think i've written yeah and we love anything good revenge stories i know i do and with eloise you know even though it's an abandoned building nowadays like around this time of year they turn into like a haunted house and i think that's where i draw the line because i'm like no there's like real spirits in here i don't you know you walking down the hall somebody might touch you but it's not really a thing i was like no that's okay i'll just i'll stay in here that's okay no need to fake it when you got the real thing am i right that's true but i was like there's limits you know i don't know now have you ever which i know you've told a story about um paranormal activities what's one encounter you have had a little bit wow i've had a number of them actually my first one was actually at the Stanley Hotel and for all of you horror fans out there you know it better as the inspiration for The Shining where Stephen King stayed there and had uh some wild experiences in room 217 and you know the the kids running up and down the hallways that you would hear and things like that that were all informed uh the shining so that was my very first paranormal encounter where uh i was there for a horror writers retreat and uh i was standing there talking to another author and she's telling me you know i i think i'm a ghost magnet you know She's explaining how she sees these shadow figures and things in her travels. And so anyway, as we're having this conversation, suddenly I get shoved from behind and buckled my knee, hard enough to buckle my knee. And I turned around and there was nobody there. I mean, it was not another living soul, if you know what I mean. And so that was the first time I'm just like, OK. I went in completely skeptic. And it's like, you know, once you have something that physically engages with you, it's obviously not natural it must be supernatural yeah and i've had my fair share of the paranormal realm but nothing like too scary but it's like when they start touching you i'm just kind of like okay i like watching it i don't actually want to be in a horror movie myself so just leave me out of it please please and thank you exactly i'd rather be here sitting in the theater seats watching it up there than actually having to be in the middle of it exactly and then another bestseller of yours is Ghastly Tales now tell us a little bit about what's involved in this spooky read okay so uh one quick thing uh just to add on eye for an eye there's actually a lot of book clubs that really embrace that one because the second story in eye for an eye um is a quite an interesting contrast but like i said they have common themes together some common imagery but some stark contrast that's a you know a couple of gen c college sophomores on a road trip from la to their uh their uh college ivy league college on the east coast you know they've never done a long road trip like this they're cruising around little prius and suddenly they're about to run out of fuel and then you know suddenly in the middle of nowhere and so you just take the first turn that you can that looks like there might be a gas station or something down there and then uh things ensue where they end up making a really bad decision and in this town that can lead to the difference between life and death or something far worse and it turns out total roller coaster um but so i just had another bookstore, actually a book club at the Calliope, or you can say Calliope, like they do in the circus bookstore up in, it's near Romeo. And so I was just there doing a signing on Saturday. And so they decided, give us a bunch of those books. We're going to do that. So I even have book club questions for that, which is kind of fun. But anyway, 13 Ghastly Tales is my short story collection. So they're all short stories that I've written, Some have been published over the last 10 years and then some that are written just for this short story collection um so it's what's kind of fun about this is kind of something for everybody so it's everything from um sci-fi to serial killers supernatural uh some circus sideshow uh stories that's one of my jams as well uh even some native american mythos so really runs the gamut of sub-genres of horror but when you ask about you know where i get those ideas from i did a fun thing with 13 ghastly tales where at the end of each short story i have a section i call backstory where i actually tell you where i got the idea what inspired each of those stories which is a lot of people have really responded well and thought that it's really cool yeah and since this is like our time of year especially yours since you write these type of stories do you have any other upcoming you know events because i know you were just at a funeral home type of thing like more which was very very creepy but it seemed like it was pretty fun so do you have anything new coming up yes as a matter of fact um i am going to be in Frankenmuth at Garland's Book Nook this saturday uh there's gonna be a mass author signing so there's gonna be uh multiple authors multiple genres but of course you know a handful of us spooky authors are going to be there and i do this every year and it's one of the best events i do um also on the 24th this one kind of came up a little last minute but you mentioned that funeral home so in toledo ohio which is basically michigan south when you think about it right i don't really want to claim it but anyway it's just over the border there but there's a place called mortuary manor and this place is amazing up until just a year or so ago it was a fully operating funeral home but it was built back in 1897 so it's this old victorian mortuary where you know you're walking into this place and you're literally walking into a funeral home you've got the casket display rooms you've got the embalming rooms and they still have the original embalming room and morgue in the basement which is so spooky down there so they've now turned it into a funerary museum so any of you that are familiar with the anatomy of death museum up in mount clemens it's the same owners that bought this place they just went down there to pick it You know, say, hey, we've got some things for our collection. They're like, they're like, I want this and this. They go, why don't you buy the whole place? He goes, I can do that. So Tyler Russell said, yeah. Him and Corey, they're like, yeah, we're going to do it. So actually on the 24th, they had a cancellation. And so we're putting together a, we're going to call a ghostly garage sale. And it's going to be a Halloween party that night. So check that out. It's going to be on October 24th. 24th and it's going to start at noon where the ghastly garage sale or ghostly garage sale whatever you want to call it and they're going to be actually selling some rare funerary items they just picked from down south these we're talking coffins that were still in the original crates that they bought them in and they're from like 100 they're like 100 years old you know they still have the hay and everything inside them and so they open some of these up they'll be selling those along with you know um the coffin handles and all kinds of funerary and embalming instruments and tool and everything and we're going to have a handful of uh spooky vendors that are also going to be there for that and then at night uh we're going to show a scary movie and and you know do just basically a halloween party what better place for a halloween party than inside an actual funeral yeah and i think the garage sale is going to be great especially if anybody's looking for like any last minute halloween decorations that you want the real thing especially when it comes to the coffins you know for the yard or anything i think that's like the perfect place just go down there and then come right back you'll be fine hopefully yes and there's stuff that you just can't find just anywhere you know again they're so rare uh and and again they're not just the new stuff either i mean they have some stuff that's vintage and again really rare uh just really special items that you it's so hard to find and here you're gonna have them all in one place yeah and so before i let you go is there anything else that you would like to say to fellow book lovers out there and especially horror fans well this time of year i recommend that you even if maybe horror is not your genre to give it a chance so it's not all necessarily blood and guts and things like that but you know the art of suspense and to uh send a chill up your spine and to to give uh you know horror authors and you know tread uh traditional published as well as indie authors that are out there just want to tickle it kind of put a tingle up your spine and just have some fun uh i i think you'll really be glad that you did well bd prince it is always great getting a chance to chat with you and talk all spooky things so thank you for coming back on the show and chatting with me and fellow book lovers we greatly appreciate it oh thank you so much always a pleasure Sid